Thursday, April 17, 2014

Reasons behind "home rule" puzzle?

Yesterday I spent all day with the Dallas City Council. The afternoon was spent with most of the Dallas ISD School Board joining with the City Council. It was a tortured day. They struggled to find good news to talk about and somehow avoided discussing "home rule" directly. DISD certainly has valid progress to celebrate through 2012!
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Dallas City Council meeting together withthe Dallas ISD School Board on 4-16-14

Why is everyone supporting Mr. Miles as a way out of "home rule"?

It is human nature. They want a way to avoid the race war reflected by the group who assumed the name "Support Our Public Schools." It is too hard to juggle two massive problems assaulting our schools at the same time.

The "home rule" distraction makes it easier to remain blissfully ignorant of the
data, the resignations, the non-renewals of teacher contracts, the pending test scores and 2014 graduation
rates! They do not know of the implosions happening with at least one high school where the principal is suddenly gone and 1/3 of teachers there rumored to
have contracts not being renewed, and most seniors are still not ready to graduate in April. They refused to talk about the behavioral sink holes that we have allowed our middle schools to become, ignoring the 400% increase in discipline problems that is accepted as "normal." They appear comfortable with a massive lack of transparency.

Will Mr. Miles still be here in 90 days? That question has been asked too many times over the past year!

Watching yesterday's meeting struggling to celebrate progress, I pondered
analogies to the Titanic. The ship was going in the right direction two years
ago with slow and constant progress on a very long trip, but we found an alleged
short cut!

What price will Dallas children ultimately pay before we return to solid,
constant, predictable progress?
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